I continue to go to physical therapy 3x/week and do my home program every morning and still feel like I am making progress.  I often forget how weak my legs still are and do something that I really shouldn’t.  There have also been a few days when I pushed my body to the extreme limit ended up completely exhausted.  That said, it feels great when I can pull something off that I was unable to do before – this past week I gained the ability to stand up from a half kneel without using my arms to pull myself up.  It’s not the smoothest motion but at least it’s happening.

Last week we started to use Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) on some of my muscles to push along the strengthening process.  EMS involves sending electrical impulses to certain muscles to stimulate them.  The muscle receives a current for an interval, say 15 seconds, and while the current is on I perform as many reps as I can of specific exercise. The current then turns off for 10 seconds so that I can rest and the process repeats for 5 minutes.  For example, when we use EMS on my quads I do leg extensions.  We are using EMS on my hamstrings, quads, and glutes.  There is a noticeable difference in the motion of my legs when the EMS is active so I am hopeful that using this technique will produce some long-term improvements.

One thing I have noticed is that if I do not stretch in the morning for some reason I can notice a difference in my flexibility throughout the day.  So if I ever think about getting lazy with regards to the stretching I have a powerful reminder on how important it is.

Today I have a short video of me doing some box jumps at the gym.  In this video I am jumping on to a platform that is 13 inches high.  I was able to do this before the surgery after months of training and 13 inches was my plateau.  This past Sunday was my first time doing box jumps since the operation and I was able to do jump onto the 13 inch platform with ease!  So I think it will only get better from here.  That said, I showed my physical therapist the video today and she gently suggested (read – told me) that I slow down and not do the box jumps again for a while.